Never mind the mud - play on! IOW festival June 2012

My first weekend music festival...! What a fabulous experience despite the very wet weather!

On Thursday morning, the heavens opened, unleashing a month's worth of rain in the space of 24 hours.

Ferry services were suspended and festival car parks were flooded. Thousands were stranded across the Solent in Southampton, while many who made it to the island in cars were stuck in seven-mile long traffic.

Yet amidst all the chaos, there was a great festival taking place.

I have just returned from a fantastic music festival at Cornbury, such an excellent vibe, it has now given me the festival bug!

The only down side was sharing a tiny three man tent with my partner, sleeping on an air bed with sleeping beds, it doesn't sound too bad, but when your partner is heavier than you! Keep on rolling sprung to mind lol

V festival last year, me and my friend had the unfortunate luck of being camped next to group of lairy university first years who had no sense of self control. It was our first time at a festival and every time we left the tent the boys shouted 'GET YER TITS OUT' repeatedly as if we actually would. After the 1st day, our tent had been pissed on twice while we were in it, we'd come back to find one of the boys passed out in his own sick on top of ALL my clothes (he had to be escorted home by an ambulance). 2nd day, our tent had not only been sh*t on, somehow one of these boys had managed to write their on name (very elegantly) in their faeces on our tent in massive letters. Cheers Alex D, that was a great present. It then rained later on so all that poop did smear off but our tent now smelt like a mixture of vomit, pee and poop and I had no more clothes to change into so I stank like sweat and perfume for the rest of the time. 3rd day I started praying because how could this get any worse, well it did. The sun came out full blast which made the stench of our tent even better (great) so we decided to abandon our tent and these lovely girls let us stay with them for the last night. Yet LO AND BEHOLD, the boys found us somehow to apologise and then managed to trash the entire tent, throw up ON ME TWICE. One of them then chucked me a £50 note and said sorry for all the trouble.

I can laugh about it now but its safe to say I'm never going to V festival again.

I went camping with a group of friends at White Horse Hill. My 8 year old daughter and I had a lovely time during the day, playing rounders and having a BBQ with all the others. During the evening we all sat around the camp fire laughing and toasting marshmallows, gazing up at the stars and enjoying the experience. One by one people began to drift off to their tents and we soon followed, zipping up our tent and giggling as we snuggled into our sleeping bag. A few hours later we were woken by a owl hooting all night, then two foxes started a fight right outside our tent, also it was so cold we just huddled together for warmth, while the foxes and owl continued to hoot and fight. My daughter started crying as she was so cold and all i could do was pile up whatever i could find onto the bed, in the end I started to cry as i was so cold and upset, I made her a promise as soon as it was light, we would pack up and go home, which we did!

Last summer I worked in Romania for a conservation volunteering charity. We spent 6 of 8 weeks camping, which I thought would be fantastic. Unfortunately, the "good quality" tents from the previous season were now dubious at best! 6 girls shared a big tunnel tent, perfect. Until the thunderstorms. The tent survived two, with us inside and out, holding it down while it tried it's best to blow away and let water in from every seam. The third time we weren't so lucky. Torrential rain, Gale force winds, thunder and lightning - 3 of us running around camp re-pegging, moving people's belongings, while the rest of the staff and around 40 volunteers were over the road under real shelter. Then our tent "the jellyfish" tried to break loose, (this is after we covered the whole thing with an additional tarp!). We held it down, and it survived with only two rips, and a small ocean in the middle. The storm subsided, and there was only one logical progression, slide on our fronts in the mud down the hill to meet everyone else. Best summer EVER.

Duke of Edinburgh Bronze expedition. The wettest June on record (2012) and we had to camp in it! Pouring rain, it was cold, and then the tent started to leak so we were not only cold, but wet too. We weren't even allowed our phones! In addition to that, all we could smell was fish (yuck). The worst bit was our teachers were 5m away from us inside in the warm, eating a chinese and drinking red wine! Never again

My parents once told me of a camping trip where they were the only tent that was still standing where they had erected it! Others had either blown over, collapsed, or ended up in the nearest hedgerow!

Moral of the story: Always take the time to peg down each and every guy-rope and pegging point securely!

When I was young (around 7 or 8) I was camping with my family in the South of France during the summer holidays. We'd been on a canoeing holiday for a week and a half and were going to drive home to the Channel Tunnel the next day. My family was Mum and Dad, the four kids and our Springer Spaniel, Winston. We had 3 tents, a large one for parents, dog and two siblings, and two of the kids had a small tent each.

To save time in the morning, we took the big tent down that evening, Mum and Dad slept under the stars with the dog and the kids squeezed two to a small tent.

Come around midnight the heavens open, drenching my parents. One of the most persistent thunderstorms came out of nowhere after a hot dry week. "This is the risk you take!" Dad said. I ended up spending the night in a one man tent with, my older brother, my dad and a dog terrified of thunderstorms. Dad and dog are soaking wet by the time they get in the tent, needless to say no one slept very well. The dog was continually fussing, fidgeting and shaking his wet fur in the cramped space. I'm able to laugh about it now but that was not a comfortable night!

In the morning we struggled out of the tent, packed up our soggy tents and began the 10 hour drive home feeling very very damp.

I remember going on a summer camping holiday when I was younger, about 10 or 11 years ago. We arrived at the campsite quite late at night after spending the day sightseeing, and being a British summer, it was cold and tipping it down with rain. It was also quite dark at this time which led to my Mum and Nan struggling to see and put our tent up. At some point, a very helpful man, who was wisely staying in a caravan, came out to help them, while his wife took me and my sister into the dry and gave us a biscuit.

Eventually, the tent was put up but I remember leaving pretty early the next morning after a wet and soggy nights sleep!

I think the only camping we've done since was in our back garden where we had the comforts of our house just meters away!

I was due to travel to Milan to a design fair as a student contributor and was pretty broke at the time of the trip. When it came to buying a tent before I left I had to get one that was on sale. I did make sure it was a good quality tent and was pleased with my purchase, deciding that a one man caterpillar tent would be sufficient for my needs.

As we flew over Italy in the early evening, my friend and I stared down, looking at the fields below and could see that they had been using some alternative farming methods: all the fields were covered in a plastic, which was reflected in the moonlight. We pondered on this for a while. Otherwise it was an uneventful flight, but the food was good and the wine was flowing. When the flight had ended with a full stomach and looking forward to a balmy Italian evening we disembarked from the plane.

As we stepping off the plane in Milan we were greeted by torrential rain and it was pitch black, obviously that was not plastic sheets on the fields but rivers of water. Our night had just got a whole lot worse, and to make things worse yet our campsite was located on the outskirts of Milan. So without a map, and very few words of Italian to rely on, we made the journey to our campsite.

Suffice to say, three nerve-wracking busses later we stepped off onto a quiet road and walked in the rain with our backpacks the final leg of the journey. Arriving at the campsite was not as traumatic as it could have been and we both felt a sense of achievement for not getting hurt or lost, however by this time we were both becoming tired and fractious. Mustering all our remaining enthusiasm we approached the reception where we were graciously directed with the wave of a hand into a black nothingness, where we reluctantly withdrew to pitch our tents.

In the spirit of Bear Grylls I donned my head torch and expertly unpacked my rucksack all over the wet floor, soaking it's contents in the process. I found my wrapped up tent languishing in the wet grass and mud. Fumbling with the sausage like tent poles I eventually managed to erect my one man caterpillar tent. I crawled in on my belly in the dark, dragging in my bag behind me and sealing then the tent. Once inside I could not move; I felt trapped all I could do was lie still and breath my own breath over and over again until morning. The thought of that made me feel dizzy, so miserably, I decided there was no other solution but to return to the bar next to the reception and drink beer so that I would not notice the stink of my own breath whilst I slept in the cocoon-like tent.

The End.

I've been camping many times, sometimes on my own, sometimes with friends and more recently with my wife and kids. I've almost always had a great time. However one big exception was the last time I went to Glastonbury in 1994 or thereabouts.

I arrived late and the campsite was absolutely packed. After trudging around in the rain for half an hour trying to find a spot big enough to pitch my tent I decided that a four foot-wide gap between two large tents was going to have to do and put up my tent as best I could. I crawled in, wet through and exhausted, to try to get some sleep. The walls of the tent were saggy and pressed against me, making me feel even more cold.

After lying there for a while I heard a slow zipping sound and realised that someone was opening up the entrance to my tent. A hand and arm reached in and groped around. When it found my rucksack it tried to slowly pull it out of the tent. I shuffled down, kicked the arm as hard as I could and snatched my rucksack back. The would-be thief swore, kicked me through the tent but left. I thought it would be wise to use my rucksack as a pillow in case anyone else tried to steal it and it proved to be a very uncomfortable one.

I got no sleep at all, but the festival the next day was excellent and made up for the lousy time I had the night before!

Having never attended a festival before, I made sure I had a very extensive list of objects to take. As any over-prepared individual would, I was prepared for any situation or eventuality: hand sanitiser, a penknife and fly repellent. As you can imagine, by the time I had managed to somehow cram each object it to my rucksack it weighed more then a small human being. Stupidly I thought, "Hey what the hell, if someone gets tangled up in some guy ropes, i'll be the hero of the hour cutting them out". Nonetheless to my dismay, when we had found the perfect camping spot, unpacked out tent and counted the correct number of pegs. We had a realisation...how exactly were we going to hammer the pegs in to rock solid ground? Sadly we were not prepared for this eventuality. This resulted in us having to use spaghetti hoops cans to bash the pegs in. Unsurprisingly, we ended up with a lot of malformed cans and a few bent pegs. Needless to say, next time I went to a festival I fitted all my belongings into a single, average sized, backpack. However I did make sure we had a hammer of sorts!

I once had my ticket blown away on a windy day whilst queuing. I was very nearly at the front when i felt it slip out of my hand! I had to forcefully push my way out of the queue watching my ticket float away and get muddy. Luckily it landed in a bush nearby and someone grabbed it just as i ran over. They looked very pleased to have a spare ticket and i had to plead with them that it was mine. Luckily they gave in after a while and I didnt have to wrestle them! The barcode was covered in dirt but they let me in. Woop woop.

I went camping in France with my family when I was seven. My family had chosen the campsite because it was very French - not too many Brits about. I had recently started learning to play the recorder, and I thought I was quite good at it. The tune I played best was God Save the Queen. One day I sat in the tent (whose 'walls' were not as thick or soundproof as I imagined) and played said tune over and over, perfecting every nuance and playing with increasing passion, until I was abruptly silenced by an irate Anglophobe screaming 'Will somebody shut that bloody child up?!' I never played the recorder again.

July in Matlock on a motorbike with a great bunch of bikers I only knew from online. Dug an old tent out of shed I'd bought in a supermarket sale 5 years earlier. BNIB - instructions all there. Borrowed a sleeping bag. Easy.

Friday night in a field segregated away from the posh car drivers. Other bikers did the macho incinerate food on a fire thing. Under the surly biker exterior mostly accountants and IT analysts who rarely see daylight, never mind go camping. One look at sticky burnt things from fire and i decide to pop to the petrol station. Where I bought some sarnies and a bottle of whisky.

11pm decided to pitch up tent as it is starting to drizzle..

Problem 1. Creases in fabric from 5 years of being folded up. Not to worry - the slight rip in a few places handily fixed by some gaffa tape I borrowed off one of my new mates.

Problem 2: I have no idea how to pitch this weird tent which is a completely different design from all the others. So it collapses twice, while having 'help' and some sarcasm from some beered up tent snobs who own canvas palaces.

Problem 3: Frogs. They come out at night. And make noise. I'm a soft comfort lover used to no nature-sound-stuff.

Problem 4: Rain. And cheap single skinned tent. And soggy ground. And canvas slowly unravelling as tape comes apart. And a slightly foggy head due to a bit too much Whyte and McKay's finest Scotch.

Luckily - biker jackets are waterproof and next day had a great buzz when we managed to get some bacon and beans made that were edible. Followed by SUN.

We were camping at a festival in Germany when a storm came so quickly that the fire brigade tried to evacuate everyone as fast as possible, but we didn't make it. We hardly got into the car next to our camp with eight people all stapled in a small VW golf when rain came pouring down and lightening and thunder hit. The trees were shaking so badly we were fearing for our lives. Because we were all wet the windows steamed up quickly and only when we cleaned them we saw two friends hanging on the poles of our pavilion trying desperately to save it from disappearing – water almost up to their knees.

Some people were more fortunate and made it to the next farmer's cow shed who kindly agreed to let the festival attendees mingle with his cows for a bit.

Luckily everyone got free entrance to the local outdoor swimming pool afterwards – since we were all drenched already it was a great move ;)

The nights were so warm the summer that I was 10 years old, that my best friend and I decided to camp out at the bottom of my garden, instead of sleeping indoors. The tent was pretty old school, a bright orange 1970s V-shaped kind that you used to see in the army. It also had two layers, separated by about a 30cm gap, which ran round the whole tent.

It had gone dark, and we were both in the tent - we'd nicked a torch from the house and were freaking each other out with ghost stories, the torch under our chins making us look ghoulish. Suddenly, we heard a frantic scrabbling on the inner walls of the tent. Something started screeching very close by, and we could see claws pricking holes through the canvas like a demented hole punch. We both started screaming, and leapt out of the tent.

It took over an hour to coax our poor traumatised cat out from between the tent layers.

Morale of the story: Don't bring claustrophobic animals camping. They don't like it.

Having spent a chilly night in our tent we awoke to a beautiful morning and looking forward to our cooked breakfast. Everything prepared and ready to cook - we had forgotten to bring a pan! The next time I camp I intend to take my (always hungry) 12 year old son and so I'm glad I have learned this important lesson! Don't forget the essentials campers...

When I was 16 I was talked in to going camping in the Lake District...in February! It was freezing. First place we camped we were told to move as it turns out it was some lady's garden around Windermere so we set off for the hills and pitched our tent again. Here we were rained on constantly and our outer tent kept flying of and landed in a tree where we couldn't reach it. We sat down for a brew and boiled some water, but as we'd bought a Heinz chocolate sponge the night before and it had taken 45 minutes of gas to cook, we had none left. We decided to give in an go and stay in my friend's uncle's house in Ambleside. On the way we saw that the water we had been drinking from the cool, clear stream was being defecated in by a large field of cows. Our stomachs dropped. Bar music festivals I've never been camping since.